In a gorgeously illustrated exploration of the art of Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Mischief Making disproves any notion that play is frivolous. Deploying mischievous tactics, Yahgulanaas shines a spotlight on serious topics.

Expressive and exuberant, comic and imaginative: these characteristics suffuse the work of the internationally recognized creator of Haida manga. His distinctive style stretches, twists, and flips the formlines of classic Haida art to create imagery that resonates with the graphic vitality of Asian manga. Mischief Making delineates the evolution of the artist’s visual practice into a uniquely hybrid aesthetic, uncovering its philosophical underpinnings.

This engaging, beautiful book reveals the artist’s deep understanding of the seriousness of play. As he investigates the intersections of Indigenous and other worldviews, the politics of land, cultural heritage, and global ecology, Yahgulanaas disrupts the expected, allowing different ways of experiencing, knowing, and seeing the world to emerge.

Nicola Levell's profile page

Nobuhiro Kishigami's profile page

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is the creator of Haida Manga, a distinctive fusion of pop graphics, Haida art and Japanese comic styles. His books include A Tale of Two Shamans; Flight of the Hummingbird, with an afterword by the Dalai Lama;Hachidori, a bestseller in Japan; and Red: A Haida Manga nominated for a BC Book Award, a Doug Wright Award for Best Book, and a 2010 Joe Shuster Award for Outstanding Canadian Cartoonist. RED was an Amazon.ca Top 100 book of 2009. Yahgulanaas is also a sculptor and graphic artist whose work is in the collections of the British Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver International Airport, City of Vancouver, City of Kamloops and University of British Columbia. He pulls from his 20 years of political experience in the Council of the Haida Nation and travels the world speaking to businesses, institutions and communities about social justice, community building, communication and change management. For more, see mny.ca. Yahgulanaas lives on an island in the Salish Sea, with his wife and daughter.

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas' profile page

[In this book], Levell's skill as a writer shines in her vivid descriptions and analysis of art works included as illustrations. Her academic knowledge and experience as a curator is also on full display in the relationships she traces between Yahgulanaas and other contemporary artists.

BC Studies

Exuberant and playful, Yahgulanaas's art nonetheless has a serious underpinning and he has a long history of environmental and political activism.

BC Book World

Yahgulanaas' work is meticulously analyzed by Levell to expose deeper levels of motivation in the work of one of the most consistently inventive contemporary Indigenous artists working in the world today.

Vancouver Sun

"Levell’s work details the sometimes tremendously difficult and fraught conversations at the very limits of narrative and artistic practice."

University of Toronto Quarterly.

Lavishly illustrated and comprehensively researched, it demonstrates a non-linear, Haida manga-style approach to considering Yahgulanaas’ extraordinarily complex art work.

The British Columbia Review